I have been to several TeachMeets. This particular TeachMeet was held at Google headquarters in Sydney which was one of the main attractions for me. I missed out on one two years earlier and as I searched for the Twitter hashtag for this evening I found an exchange that occurred about the use of #TMGoogle – the issue being that TeachMeets are supposed to be teacher ran and teachers as presenters, no sponsorship. However, to host a TeachMeet in a cool location such as Google HQ there is a trade-off. Tonight I felt the trade to be rather unequal. The hashtag was not #TMGoogle but perhaps it should have been. It seemed every second speaker represented Google and was promoting something, useful somethings, but advertisements nevertheless. An extra grating factor was that teacher presenters were held to their time limits, albeit poorly, speakers not being deterred by soft Star Wars toys being thrown at them when their time had expired, yet Google presenters had limitless time. And trust me, the teachers were much more interesting than the Google employees.

The stated theme of this TeachMeet was ‘Solve for x’, thereby promoting problem solving in education, that students solve whatever issue ‘x’ represented for teachers and/or students. The evening was officially launched by Kimberley Sutton through a YouTube video to explain the concept: Moonshot Thinking: Solve for x @ Tribeca Film Festival. Our first teacher presenter linked a goal to this theme nicely.

I have known Phillip Cooke through TeachMeets and Twitter for many years. He is a passionate secondary school educator and declared this evening that his moonshot concept is teaching for life instead of for exams, a policy I am also passionate about. I have enjoyed seeing Phillip present on this theme in many variations before. He is always interesting because not only does he and his colleagues come up with the ideas but they actually implement them, although I’m sure he wish he could implement more. Phillip was intricately involved in the complete rebuild of his school, a school often seen in the industry as an alternative option for the misfits in our education system and thus had a poor reputation for a long time for drugs and disruptive behaviour. However, its hands-on practical approach to education is becoming more dominant in industry discourse and it has featured on a TV show for doing things a little differently.

Phillip’s attitude towards authentic learning is borne out by some of the initiatives he has shared:

Establishing an annual Creative Careers Day where the future implications of their learning come to life through the people operating in creative enterprises

Printing art designs of students on tea towels and selling them, simple but effective (also make great thank you presents at Teach Meets)

If I was to give my own moonshot for teaching and learning is that I desperately want students to be thinking for themselves. As a senior school teacher, I hate how much teaching is about preparing for HSC exams, such as artificial artifice that it diminishes authentic learning. This is why I always like what Phillip has to say.

Epistemology (how do we think, why do we think, what influences our thinking and perception)

My daughter is currently studying International Relations and Human Rights at university. She would have loved the opportunity to examine some of these topics at school. Her response being:

One of the students undertaking this course used several sources to investigate the Jewish holocaust and, as might be expected, referred to movie representations of the holocaust such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. He also had access to his grandmother’s letters and other documents depicting her time as a Jew interned by Hitler. The result was not just a well researched product but the rest of the class had a new insight into the atrocities.

Nick Brierley hooked me by not only emphasising the thinking skill of problem solving but linking to the TV show Stranger Things, where the children in the show are constantly having to solve problems, not always successfully. He advocated the use of BreakoutEDU, a resource for creating engaging problem-solving games in classrooms. This is definitely a tool I will investigate further.

Technology definitely has a role to play in developing students’ critical thinking skills. A primary school teacher, Alfina Jackson commenced with the statement that she hasn’t heard students say they need PD before they can use technology, so if they can do it, teachers can do it too. Glib, but mostly true. I have come across many teachers who are so ingrained in teaching the same way, with the same worksheets, year after year, that they truly struggle with making more than the occasional change to their regular modus of operation.

Alfina has her own YouTube Channel, mainly consisting of videos made by K-2 students. These videos demonstrate learning in an authentic and meaningful way for our modern age. Without many of us realising it, children are learning all the time through YouTube. Actually many adults too. I recently used YouTube to learn how to cast-off my knitting. Alfina is therefore not only teaching students a particular topic, she is teaching digital responsibility. Creating public videos also motivates students through the hands-on activity and real audience feedback. All of this requires several higher-order thinking processes.

Another initiative Alfino implemented was Year 1 completing book reviews on Google Slides. For the content, the teacher taught students to use three simple sentence word-starters:

I liked the part…

I disliked the part…

I would change…

However, after a quick introduction to using Google Slides, the students worked out for themselves and taught each other the various creative features of using the slides. After the first drafts were completed the teacher provided feedback through the comment feature which prompted students to comment on each other’s reviews, leading to a discussion of how to write positively, particularly in a public domain.

On the other hand, I don’t believe technology should be used for simply its own sake. Alfino showed how students learning to write could trace the letter on an iPad. I’m not sure how this particularly improves on the pen and paper version except simply for the hook that it is on an iPad.

The highlight of the evening was the dynamic Kathleen O’Rourke. Kathleen is learning to become a Primary School teacher at Macquarie University after a decade or so in the workforce. She is passionate about many things and her LinkedIn profile reveals she is not only an advocate for education and the marginalised but she walks the talk. At first I thought she was also going to emphasise technology due to her tagline, “Is it OK to ask students to do something that we are not comfortable to do ourselves?” Instead, Kathleen answered that question with, “If we don’t pursue our x’s how can we expect our students to?”

As part of being a pre-service teacher, Kathleen decided there wasn’t enough professional development on offer, beyond the regular uni courses and practicum experience so out together some events and now the concept has exploded. As a full-time carer for her grandmother, Kathleen found it difficult to access working disabled toilets, particularly in medical institutions. Consequently, she has an aim to develop an app that lists and user-rates them. I spoke to Kathleen at the end of the evening and found just how determined she is to put theory into action. Earlier that day she had been at a school presenting to teachers and discussing with them a university assignment. This was not part of the set work. She has also tutored primary-aged students who are newly settled refugees on a volunteer basis.

I was not the only one who thought Kathleen was amazing. This was the reaction on Twitter:

All in all it was worthwhile attending this TeachMeet. I learned about some new Google products and enjoyed hearing how other teachers are implementing problem solving and other critical thinking activities. However, I’d prefer it if future TeachMeets adhered to the no sponsorship ideal, even (especially?) if it means returning to the pubs and clubs where they began.

Last period today I finally met my Year 9 Geography class properly. We are starting with the topic of Water Management and on the weekend I found this wonderfully appropriate game called Catchment Detox. So today I introduced the course by just asking them to play the game for the whole 64 minute lesson, briefly raising the idea of showing them how to play, but they assured me they could work it out for themselves and in the most part, they did. The game involves taking 100 turns and at each turn deciding upon how to raise money through industry (eg various forms of agriculture and/or tourism), how to manage water supplies (eg investing in water research and/or building dams) and other ecological decisions (eg whether to make national parks). I dangled a prize of a packet of lollies for the highest score by the time of our next lesson on Wednesday.

Some students went slowly and carefully while others went at great speed and played nearly three times in the time period. They were allowed to play in pairs or individually with most choosing individually but openly discussing tactics with each other. As some became more adept at the game they helped others. Some were competitive, trying to find out each other’s achievements. Interesting, even though I had said score/rank was what would win the prize, most of the focus was on how much money they were earning. I heard conversations about cows versus pigs, orchards versus rice and excitement about investing in viticulture. Questions of each other were asked about salinity, where one should build a dam and the merits of logging. A handful of students listened to music with ear buds and one played music quietly on his laptop, muting it whenever I came near, as if I couldn’t hear it unless I was standing right next to him. Other than looking for music, I didn’t see any screens not on the game until the last few minutes of the lesson.

Many students were scoring in the 500,000s (I achieved 599,602 in my only game yesterday) but then 5 minutes before the end, a student who already shows signs of being disengaged, low achieving and disruptive in a ‘regular’ class environment was excited to achieve 642,000+ and was very pleased to have a fuss made about it. When I say ‘signs’ I guess I mainly mean his attitude or perhaps just my teacher’s sixth sense.

I learned about lots of the students’ behaviour (who swears, who becomes loud when excited, who is competitive and so on) and they had a lot of fun. They left class feeling good about themselves, with most of them thanking me for the class. The next lesson will be about what sort of issues Australia faces in regards to water management and I bet they’ll have heaps to contribute now. I look forward to seeing them with their thinking caps on, applying the game to real life, and hopefully engaging in authentic learning. I’m glad I was game enough to throw them into chaos from Day One.

Photo by author: Skype to Palestine (ex-student converted from Christianity to Islam)

Globalisation has had a profound effect on education. The breaking down of political, trading and geographical barriers, strongly influenced by the development of the Internet and advanced communication techniques, is altering education from being inward looking to being more world focused. Instead of peering into textbooks, students are beginning to connect with the wider world through technological processes.

Curriculum is being prescribed for a globalised world but it is politically motivated with too much attention placed on the economy and the students’ future role as a labour resource. The influence of a capitalist economy is also apparent in the political promotion of “choice, competition and performance” in Australian schools, evident in the enforcement of transparency of test results and in the development of national curriculum (Buchanan 2011, p.68).

An example of economic language involved with curriculum is in the discussion of the environment and in particular climate change. The word ‘sustainable’ is used often but in relation to a sustainable economy instead of having the emphasis on sustaining people’s interaction with the environment. For instance, in the draft ACARA Geography Curriculum (2013) the word ‘economy’, or its derivative, appears 66 times. Lambert (2013) argues for Geography to play a greater role in British curriculum, by linking “economic, environmental and educational crises of our times” (p.85) to present a case for a curriculum of survival as opposed to sustainability. Emotive and economic language is all too common in current literature about curriculum (Ditchburn 2012).

The economy, globally and locally, is important but it should not be the dominant force influencing curriculum. There needs to be more emphasis on students being actively involved in all aspects of community, globally and locally, not just the economic component.

The more I examine curriculum the more I am convinced that we should be moving to capabilities as a focus in curriculum (ACARA 2011, Reid 2005). Lambert (2013) is arguing the opposite. He views the shift to ‘competences’ and the integration of subjects causing the “contemporary erosion of trust in specialist knowledge, and increased emphasis on students’ experience” and changing “the emphasis of the curriculum from content to skills and to favour more open ‘facilitative’ pedagogies” (p.89). He then concludes that this shift “almost signals that schools should give up on knowledge” (p.90). Personally, I’m tired of extreme rhetoric. What we need in curriculum and pedagogies is greater balance. There is a place for specialist knowledge, a place for experience in active learning and a place for skills as well as knowledge in modern curriculum.

As technology comes to the fore through globalisation, teachers are as important as ever due to the skill required to balance the numerous influences on education with each unique student that comes before them. I believe in having a structured curriculum and thus resist the term ‘student-directed learning’ which makes me think of ‘free schools’ where students themselves organise learning activities or self-select from the activities provided (Galley 2004). I am an advocate for technology and student-centred learning but there needs to be a balance. I would like to see teachers who generally want to remain traditional, expository in nature, to learn to yield some of the control, place some of the learning process into the hands of students and connect to a community beyond the walls of the classroom. Again, I call for balance and sensibility.

Just as there are an immense variety of students in our education system and a wide range of resources available, each and every school, class and teacher need to adapt accordingly. My dream is of schools, rich and poor, around the world, connecting, allowing all of us to think critically and gain deeper understanding of ourselves and each other. We need to think what is best for our students and community, not necessarily our economy.

The rhetoric of the role of technology in education spruiked by government bodies and other institutions was clearly demonstrated by Jordan (2011). It provided a similar awakening for me that the research conducted by Marcos, Sanchez and Emilio (2011) into teacher reflections also provided (see previous post). Basically, in both cases, there are a lot of statements made emphatically, authoritatively but with little evidence of research into the effectiveness of the promoted course of action.

The problem is the rate of change in education today, particularly in regards to education. People feel there isn’t enough time to conduct research. It is compounded by the familiarity many people feel towards technology and the absolute horror felt by others. Those who have the knowledge and experience easily dictate how it should all work to those who know little.

However, in my not so humble opinion, some of Jordan’s criticisms are of almost universally accepted truths. For instance, technology is a driver of change. It is evident by the smart phones in people’s pockets and how they use them. Jordan (2011) lists “ICT as driving welcomed change” (p.419) as her first theme in representations of ICT. My issue is with the word ‘welcome’. The language in political rhetoric is more about “opportunities” (p.420) that can be gained with ICT change. The more emotive and persuasive language is found in words such as “vital” (p.420) in regards to how technology should be used for learning. This is not saying it is welcomed.

Of course politicians and educational institutions want to focus on the positives students’ futures. Don’t we teachers want the same? I believe it is fairly obvious that there is potential to harness and transform technology for the good of education so I don’t agree with Jordan’s criticism on these points (p.421). However, the word ‘revolutionise’, to me, is pushing the rhetoric a bit too far.

Overall I don’t object much to the rhetoric used regarding the potential of ICT in education. However, I agree with Jordan’s criticisms of descriptions of students as “digitally savvy” (2011, p.425), a term coined by Mark Prensky, a prolific keynote speaker around the world. He has experienced four years in the classroom, 1968-1971 (Prensky 2013). In the classroom we too often see the shortfalls in students’ ICT knowledge, such as not knowing to use CTRL F to search for a particular term in a screed of text. From my experience, they have a much more narrow experience of technology than I, generally restricted to gaming and social networking.

At my previous school, teachers were constantly marginalised to being facilitators and technology lifted to the role of teacher. Jordan (2011) argued that where students are deemed digitally savvy, “the teacher is relegated to the role of passive mediator, the instrumental means to predetermined ends” (p.428). It is a false depiction.

Popenici (2013) lamented the portrayal of an ideal where students completely self-direct their learning in a blog post that resonated to an extent with the experience I had with my previous school. For instance a ‘Deep Learning Day’ was introduce one day a week for Year 11 to work on whatever they chose, even though teachers were expected to provide work that may not be completed. Students were allowed to consult with teachers but teachers were (originally) not meant to keep them on task or offer unrequested assistance.

Personally, I agree with most of the rhetoric of the politicians but agree with Jordan’s concerns for the way students are depicted as having a technological advantage over teachers. The framing of the use of technology in education needs to more realistic for the opportunities and possibilities to be achieved through recognition of the true support and development required to make it happen.

I have recently been immersed in a wide range of activities learning about curriculum, pedagogy and technology in schools. As a consequence I am attempting to write a series of related blog posts. Yesterday I wrote about IT Infrastructure. Today I’m writing about pedagogy with a focus on research by Kalantzis and Cope, as seen in their New Learning website.

I don’t have a single pedagogical model to call my own. I am deeply cynical and resent prescribed models dictating a single way of teaching, yet this week I had to present on 21st Century Fluencies because this is a the model I’ve been training teachers in PD sessions at my school, as part of my role on the Innovative Learning Team. Solution Fluency is just one style of Project Based Learning (PBL) and PBL is just one pedagogical practice. What I like about PBL is its focus on process as much or more than the product.

I believe teaching should be a balance of a whole variety of methods and be flexible according to circumstances, with circumstances being anything from the students themselves to the weather.

Kalantzis and Cope (2012, p.86) describe today’s typical learning environment accurately, “We have in our classes today a generation of young people who will be bored and frustrated by learning environments that fail to engage every fiber of their intellectual and active capabilities”.

I hence also like how Kalantzis and Cope (2012, p.84) advocate for traditional teaching “to be replaced by new notions of ‘learning design’”. In some ways planning for learning is my favourite part of teaching because Plan A is for a perfect world where students behave according to expectations and technology works as it should and I’m excited for its potential. It is then a case of Plan B, Plan C and so on as all the possible variables come into play. Plan A generally focuses on “addressing the big questions” (p.84), much in line with the programming model my school follows, Understanding by Design, not that I think this needs to be followed strictly either.

I would love to see schools that Kalantzis and Cope (2012) call “sites of energetic intellectual inquiry and practical solution development” (p.86) and my previous school was trying to do this but at the expense of other aspects of education, such as nurturing students. I think this community centre of thinking is almost science fiction idealism but I dream.

Back to class, I like students to be active in their learning, meaning I am student centred in my pedagogy. I’m not so fond of the term student-directed because I believe, in the main, students still need to be provided with direction, although there should be a place for passion projects. This why I’m against open-plan learning but support flexible learning spaces so that learning can occur at a cohort level, large groups, classes, small groups, triplets, pairs or alone.

Technology must have a role in Australian education because it is so integrated into our daily lives and is engaging for students. It also allows for a wider audience and collaborators outside textbooks, schools and teachers’ own knowledge. Thus learning is more connected to reality. Students therefore need to be literate and discerning with technology.

My pedagogical model is a mixed bag but my motto, Keeping it Real, is what’s closest to my heart.

I’m fond of looking at my life from the perspective of an alien on a fact finding mission on the behaviour of Earthlings. This concept served me well in a Year 12 English assignment that a good friend continues to cite as the moment she knew I should be a writer.

More than 20 years later and I have written little, in the literary sense anyway. If an alien had been observing me the last few days it would think I was a sloth, moving only from bed to toilet to kitchen to couch repeatedly. The toilet visits are quite frequent due to the copious cups of tea and glasses of mountain stream water, delicious straight from the kitchen tap in my holiday cabin. However, the kitchen visits are also for the naughties I bought for this stay the tiny town of Talbingo. I consumed half a family-sized packet of lollies the first day and half a packet of Mint Slice biscuits the second, the remainder being consumed by my husband and children who actually earned the calories by skiing each morning at the Selwyn Snowfields while I stayed holed up in our cabin.

My alien watcher would see me flit from phone to book to papers in what may seem a fruitless shuffle. There is no phone coverage from Optus in Talbingo so I can’t text but through the magic of a wifi dongle I still connect around the globe, even to my dear Twitter friends attending the enormous International Society for Technology in Education Conference in San Antonio, USA. Other Twitter friends attended a TeachMeet in my home town, Sydney, last night but the commute was too far from here for me to attend. As they went to a TeachEat afterwards, my family and I walked to the Talbingo Lodge for the All You Can Eat Pizza Night, which was surprisingly pleasant, helped by a bottle of red wine.

The Talbingo Lodge had been locked up for about a year, looking for someone to love and care for her. Three months ago a new owner came along, a regular holiday maker in Talbingo, originating from Cootamundra where he has a similar establishment. Perhaps I should interview the owner, for a general piece of writing, or for a Business Studies case study for my class or for an EdAssist article. The Talbingo joint is eclectic with various paraphernalia stuck around, like caps and hats hanging above the bar, skis and golf clubs stuck on walls and ceiling, a games room for the kids, including an X Box with a car racing game which won my son over. He played against a kid he’d never met before. The Mum approached my thirteen year old to explain the loud competitive eight year old boy was autistic and my son volunteered that it was fine by him because he was autistic too. The owner was concerned about the loud behaviour of my son’s new friend because people were trying to watch the rugby. Well, sort of. It wasn’t a big deal of a game. That’s tonight. We’re returning to the Talbingo Lodge tonight for the Stage of Origin, booked our now favourite table, by the fire, in front of the large TV screen.

So here I am, having completed the essential marking of 45 Society and Culture essays in two days, giving myself a reprieve before I tackle the less essential marking. I’m reading ‘The Office’ by Gideon Haigh and it could be describing me as it provides the history of clerks working irregular hours, fitting in their own writing as much as possible a la Dickens. Except I seem to do a lot of thinking about writing but not much writing in itself. I completed a Masters of Arts recently, majoring in writing and literature and discovered I had a gift for script writing (thanks Deakin for the HD). Unfortunately for my students I’m also excellent at Editing, another HD subject. I have a couple of scant plots mapped out for scripts but I just can’t seem to find the oomph to dedicate some real slabs of time at it.

Instead I tend to focus on the here and now, so I end up immersing myself in all things related to school. This year I am teaching six subjects and am on the Innovative Learning Team (ILT) which is currently constructing a report about the future direction of pedagogy and technology in the school. The ILT is saving me from being downtrodden by my numerous classes – I’ve never had so many before. Plus I’ve stepped down from management positions to start afresh at a new school so I’m not used to facing so many students in recent times. It’s a hard slog! I’m constantly being encouraged to keep being innovative and try new things in my classroom by two of my four superiors. One of the others is remote and simply trusts me and another prefers old school, but that’s OK because I just balance traditional with my ‘keeping it real’ style in Business Studies anyway.

I have volunteered to speak for 7 minutes at a TeachMeet in a month’s time on Chaos Theory, planning for it to be about my Year 10 Geography class where I have a class of 30 boys, most being quite boisterous in nature. This class was noisy when they were arranged in rows and given traditional worksheet learning so now I conduct it more like Project Based Learning (PBL) and it’s slightly louder. Less evidence of learning is being produced and they probably won’t perform as well in an exam as the other classes but I believe they understood the concepts much better as a result of the PBL style.

The ILT is grabbing my real passion as I like to push students to achieving their best but not in the traditional sense of scoring well in exams. Since I have a broader goal for students I am a bit of a trumpeter for changing the ways of teaching. However, I am about balance, having just left a school that was going too far in the one direction, in my not so humble opinion. Two aims I have just jotted down in my steadfast companion of a notebook are probably not achievable in the near future but I think, wouldn’t it be great if I could help students to map out their own educational path, mentor and guide them, plus help each student create a portfolio of their achievements. I’ve only looked at a couple of online programs that would do that but they didn’t tickle my fancy.

One of the other activities I have flitted about on is consideration for my son’s education. He attends that school where I previously taught and I’m trying to conceive a plan for him to fit into the school, achieve traditionally set school goals and achieve some goals of our own. Today I emailed a reply to his Case Manager (due to his autism) about a meeting for next term. I’m hoping to present a mildly radical plan of action for the rest of the year, involving dropping Art and arranging self-directed project time for him instead which he would need to report in the form of Tumblr or the like.

So here I am, having just spewed out 1000 words in what should be organised into several different pieces of writing. I’ll let this sit for a while and return to it later. Perhaps this afternoon, perhaps tomorrow, we’ll see. I am a procrastinator. And besides, it’s time for food and a cup of tea.

What if some staff became semi-itinerant in terms of the staff room location?

What if each staff room had a table space for collaboration – as well as a couple of comfortable chairs and perhaps less desks and/or privately managed work materials (aka clutter)?

What if ‘mobile’ staff could choose which staff room they wanted to work in from day to day?

What if some staff would like to trial using the Hub (even with its open access and senior students) as their home base for work and meeting with students or staff (if a GLM or LAM)?

How might we provide secure space for them in the Hub? – possibly a locker or a mobile mini-caboose?

Are you a ‘change’ junkie? Does any of this strike a chord with you? Are you interested in putting your hand up to try something different?

My Principal emailed around the above questions and I knew I had to respond. If I don’t respond how can I ever argue about any changes that are inflicted upon me. This was my chance to influence the working situation I would like to be in.

Currently I am not completely happy with my staffroom. There is one phone shared amongst 7-8 staff. As an online teacher I am often at my desk answering on everyone else’s behalf. That said, I am also often responding to knocks on the door from students, looking for items teachers have forgotten to take to class or to see one of the other teachers in the room. Music students are particularly frequent visitors sincethey need to book rehearsal times, fetch instruments out of storage and just generally more needing of support.

One of my really good friends is approaching retirement and at times she can be a little negative. She is a great teacher but is not very flexible with changing attitudes towards education, particularly regarding technology and student-centred learning. As much as I love her it is becoming harder sharing such close space with her.

So, to escape this situation the Principal’s offer looks appealing.

I actually like the idea of the Hub in many ways. There would be more interruptions but they will be more for me instead of someone else. I worry about the security of students’ work, since it is a place senior students use. As I mark papers I would need to secure them every time I left my desk for even short periods of time. I like communicating and collaborating with teachers across the whole school, being in the centre of activity. But not all the time. I can see working in the Hub being appropriate some of the time.

There will be occasions where I will need to work with staff in my faculty on activities such as programming and assessment writing. A meeting room where we can spread out and not be interrupted would be ideal in these situations. As a head of faculty I would also need somewhere private to talk one-on-one with a member of staff or students.

However, to be very productive in my individual work, I like quiet. Recently I shared a quiet office for a couple of weeks with just two other occupants. One, a non-teaching member of staff, is quite a reserved person, although he received many phone calls (each desk had its own phone) and the other was away teaching most of the time. I achieved a great deal of work during this time due to the lack of interruptions and the room being what we dubbed ‘a cone of silence’.

I’m not one for personal photographs or artefacts at my desk but I like my own stash of stationery and resources to call upon. If I had a large locker for these items plus my files and folders it would be an adequate solution. I would love to have a business/economics/culture area within the school where all the associated resources were stored with some comfy chairs and a round table to spread out alone on or to hold meetings around. Every time I went to teach a class I wouldn’t want to lug around my lap-top with me. It would need somewhere safe and secure, away from where students could read my email or tamper with files, although a locking mechanism could work. Many students could hack through it though. I am not yet willing to trade a lap-top in to totally rely on an iPad or some other Personal Digital Device.

I like to change where I work. At home I have a desk but more often I am in front of the TV on the couch or in bed. Once a week I stay at my in-laws and adapt to being in a different location, packing for me and my children each week. I am a very busy person and take my iPad to conferences and my lap-top when I stay at houses of family and friends (just about everyone has wireless access). When I have a looming due date for a writing gig I stay at a hotel for a weekend to have peace and quiet and room service, alone, away from all the domestic demands of my own house.

Overall I like the concept of not having a permanent desk but it would have to be managed carefully and securely. I would need a large locker space or an area of storage that was easy and attractive to access. I started a pro and con list but the list was coming out with many more cons than pros, the most prominent ones being noise, lack of storage and lack of privacy. The pros being a more collaborative atmosphere, more flexibility and you know what, sometimes change is good. I did a bit of Google, Twitter (thanks @SimonBorgert and @BAFDiploma) and academic database research and found we should also be concerned with hygiene, RSI and other ergonomic factors and practicalities such as how one is to be located when there is a phone call or how to print.

Yet my deepest concern is the divide it could cause amongst staff. Already there is a bit of divide between those teachers who embrace technology and are flexible within their classrooms and those who are more traditional in their approach. I am concerned that it is perceived as an ‘either you are with us or against us’ attitude from the top. I am willing to try it but am scared that once a few of us say we are willing to try it leads to a headlong rush into doing it for real, for everyone whether they like it or not, no turning back. Sometimes at our school trials are really an easing-in of a new idea, not trials at all.

I wouldn’t have described myself as someone who embraces change. But yes, I will respond to the Principal’s email, putting up my hand to say I am willing to try something different. But I will also send him the link to this blog.

Last year, according to the NSW Board of Studies, approximately 16,000 students sat the HSC Business Studies Examination, making it a very lucrative market for textbook publishers to snare. Due to a new syllabus being issued for Business Studies in 2011, there is a new batch of textbooks vying for a place on school booklists. It is my job to make that selection for our students. However, I am tempted to not use a textbook at all. I teach in a technology rich environment where students are able to use a range of resources so I’m finding it increasingly hard to justify the purchase of one expensive textbook.

In the last decade our Business studies students have used three different versions of a Preliminary Business Studies textbook. The first one we used was published by Longman (since absorbed into Pearson Publishing) and written by Sykes, Hansen and Codsi. It contained good case studies and diagrams but it was too wordy. Then we switched to the Leading Edge version by Robert Barlow and Kate Dally because it was easy reading and had a fantastic workbook to accompany it. However, the text lacked substance so for the last few years we have used Business Studies in Action by Stephen Chapman and Natalie Devenish, originally under the Wiley label, but now under its Australian school division, Jacaranda. There are sections in this textbook which are too complicated and other areas which could have a little more detail, but overall it has just the right level of depth for our students. During this time our worksheets and teaching programs have settled into a nice partnership with this textbook but that is about to change.

The first publisher to woo me was Jacaranda with an emailed invitation to a workshop. The main author of Business Studies in Action, Stephen Chapman, is an excellent presenter through his knowledge and engaging real life stories from the classroom so I accepted the invitation.

The workshop was useful for providing an overview of the new syllabus and discussing some ideas with other teachers regarding implementation in the classroom. The textbook appears professional with engaging photographs and a clear and colourful layout. Chapman attempts to make students think like business people, particularly with the What would you do section at the start of each chapter. This supports my Business Studies class motto of ‘keeping it real’. I encourage students to treat their studies not as school work but as preparation for actually running a business one day.

Jacaranda offers an online supplement to the textbook including case studies, worksheets and crosswords. Although this website is still being developed I am surprised it doesn’t have what could be called truly interactive and engaging resources, other than the major business plan project. The project involves video and a range of images to grab students’ attention but really requires the finesse and sophistication that students now encounter on a regular basis online. For instance there is no provision for networking within the group version of the project. The ‘jacaranda plus’ website is the feature Jacaranda is pushing the most but from my school’s highly technological perspective it isn’t a very appealing aspect.

Soon after I attended the Jacaranda workshop a friendly saleswoman from Pearson visited my school. The Business Studies textbook she showed me looked like it was merely a hatchet job of the existing version with the same old style of activities, few pictures and a dated colour palette of dark cyan and purple. It also has online support but similarly to the Jacaranda website it fails to live up to its hype. Pearson have now also organised a workshop but there is little point in me attending another one.

In a school immersed in technology such as mine, we are moving away from traditional textbooks and using increasingly more online resources. Online content is generally included in the exorbitant price charged for textbooks but if teachers only want the online component it is still very expensive. To go without textbooks and only use the online component, Pearson have said it would be 70% of the cost of the textbook per student. It would be better if publishers broke their online content into components with small fees for each part. Teachers could then use only the most suitable aspects for their classes. Parents are understandably not amused at paying over $60 for a textbook to only have it used a small amount in class.

That said, due to time constraints, I have chosen Business Studies in Action by Stephen Chapman to be on our booklist for Year 11 students next year. There is a distinct cultural change occurring in the teaching and learning environment. The students are ready, my school is ready but the publishers and some teachers are not. I am hoping that this time next year I will have constructed a program and negotiated an arrangement with publishers so that we don’t need to commit to just one textbook for the course. There is no one definitive source of knowledge and it is time classrooms and publishers adapted.

[The above heading was inspired by a post during Twitter #edchat 6 Oct.]

It took me a while to let go of control in the classroom. But really, I had to have control before I could let go of it. But then am I really losing control, or just utilising it better?

When I first started teaching Year 10 Commerce I would attempt to have quiet and students would take lots of notes from the board. As I became more comfortable with the class I increasingly used a data projector hooked to my lap-top to show students relevant websites and real-life examples of what we were studying. The first time I borrowed the projector and its bag of cords from the school library a student had to set it up for me. The next two years I taught him Economics, but not being the sharpest tool in the shed, he was bottom of the class. Yet, he was always endearing and we had a good relationship. With the benefit of scaling he scraped a pass in Economics in the HSC. That was 3 years ago. I was at a gig the other night when a drunken voice called, “Hello Mrs Hartley” and we caught up again. The boy who was second last in that Economics class was also with him. It was an embarrassing but nice moment.

But back to technology and teaching. I was rewarded for attempting to use technology in my lessons by being timetabled into computer labs and the more the school installed them the more lab time I was allocated. Now my Commerce classes are always in a computer room. It is an extremely noisy room with lots of different activities occurring. At the end of the term I bought display folders, stuck in a contents page in each (what they should have achieved) and the students printed out their work for themselves and for their parents to take pride in their achievements (required parent sign-off). The students were really excited to see all they had done during the term. There was a real buzz in the classroom, even from the students who were madly trying to catch-up on neglected work. Now I have been on Twitter I know I can probably find a way to do this electronically, paperless.

I mostly guide, rather than teach.

BUT there is a teacher who teaches the same course as me but in an entirely different manner. He is the old chalk ‘n’ talk style but the students sit quietly and adore him, as do I (I don’t know anyone with more grace). I just hope that my noisy classroom teaches skills as well as knowledge and understanding.